The first round of the French Open is set to conclude at Roland Garros on Tuesday as the tournament tries to keep pace with the schedule despite the rain threatening to get in the way in the opening stages of the event.
Monday was an emotional day at the French Open as we may have seen Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros in this tournament for the last time. Novak Djokovic, Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina are among the players looking to revive the crowd spirits on Tuesday.
Day 2 Recap
Rafael Nadal bowed out in straight sets to the fourth seed Alexander Zverev on an emotional afternoon on the Philippe Chatrier Court. Prior to that match, the defending champion Iga Swiatek cruised through while over on Suzanne Lenglen, Coco Gauff and Stefanos Tsitsipas were equally as comfortable winners. The likes of Daniil Medvedev, Jannik Sinner, Danielle Collins and Ons Jabeur were easy winners too but Maria Sakkari was a high profile casualty.
Day one was a good one for us betting wise but the same can’t be said of the second one where both bets that we put up were losers. Annoyingly, Clara Burel had a set point in the opening set of her match with Anna Kalinskaya and served for the second set and came up dry on both occasions. Luca van Assche was then no real match for Denis Shapovalov in the second of our bets so we need an improvement on Tuesday.
Philippe Chatrier Court
The day begins with our outright bet in the women’s draw in Qinwen Zheng looking to end the career of Alize Cornet. The French player will see her tennis career come to a close when she exits this tournament but will be looking to extend it a few more days. When they are done the beaten finalist in the last two years is on the court when Casper Ruud takes on the Brazilian qualifier Felipe Meligeni Alves. The day session concludes with Aryna Sabalenka looking to keep the calendar slam alive when she faces the young star Erika Andreeva. We have one match in the night session and it sees Novak Djokovic opening his defence of the title when he meets the home wildcard Pierre-Hugues Herbert.
Suzanne Lenglen Court
The former Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina will open up the schedule on the second court on Tuesday when she meets the Belgian player Greet Minnen. When they are done Tomas Martin Etcheverry will go onto the court to face off against Arthur Cazaux. Daria Kasatkina is the third seeded player onto the second court on Tuesday when she meets Magdalena Frech before the schedule is rounded off by the exciting Holder Rune who goes up against the one remaining British player left in the men’s draw in the shape of Dan Evans.
Simonne Mathieu Court
We begin the day on the third court with a couple of men’s matches with Alex de Minaur the seed who will open up the show when he goes up against the American player Alex Michelsen. Another American follows them onto court in the form of Taylor Fritz. He will probably be looking forward to the grass and hard swings to come but before then he’ll be looking to get rid of Federico Coria. We end the day on this court with the two women’s matches with the Strasbourg winner Madison Keys the first on show when she faces the Mexican player Renata Zarazua before Victoria Azarenka meets the former semi-finalist Nadia Podoroska.
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Best of the Rest
The outside courts have the remainder of the first round in the singles draws on show but the doubles also gets underway on Tuesday as well. In terms of seeded players away from the main courts were have the likes of Elise Mertens, Adrian Mannarino, Katie Boulter, Alexander Bublik, Emma Navarro and Tallon Griekspoor among others while recognisable names such as David Goffin, Angelique Kerber and the former winner Sloane Stephens are all on court on Tuesday as well.
Men’s Betting
The 10/11 on Thanasi Kokkinakis to get the better of his Australian compatriot Alexei Popyrin interests me on Tuesday. The first reason why it interests me is because there is more rain in the forecast for the Paris area on Tuesday which is likely to slow up the air and the courts so the better variety of the former Australian Open doubles champion is likely to come to the fore. The other reason why I like him is he has gone better on the clay of the two this season.
To be fair to Popyrin, he did beat Andrey Rublev in Monte Carlo but he has lost his last four matches on the clay, the last of which was against world number 135 Hamad Medjedovic which isn’t a good look. Kokkinakis is 9-4 in his last 13 matches on the clay with a couple of decent wins in among them along the way. Kokkinakis has plenty of good Grand Slam experience even if his highlight was in the doubles but I think he has the variety in his game to get the job done here.
Women’s Betting
There isn’t actually a lot that floats my boat in the women’s draw on Tuesday but I can’t ignore the Rabat champion from last week in Peyton Stearns only giving up 3.5 games in her match against Lucija Ciric-Bagaric. Ciric-Bagaric came through qualifying last week and to be fair to her she did it without dropping a set but she is massively up in class in this match and I expect that to be shown on the scoreboard at the end of the contest.
Stearns has been touted as one to watch for a while and her win in Rabat last week certainly did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm around the young American. Stearns absolutely walloped Mayar Sherif in the final in Morocco last week, winning 62 61 and that shows us that on the big stage she can perform. The powerful American player saw off the likes of Petra Martic in Parma earlier in the season and we saw at the US Open that the Grand Slam tournaments get her juices flowing. I expect her to be too good for a potentially outmatched opponent here.
Tips
Back T.Kokkinakis to beat A.Popyrin for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Paddy Power
Back P.Stearns (-3.5 games) to beat L.Ciric-Bagaric for a 3/10 stake at 1.95 with Unibet
